Orie said other inmates continued to address her as ``senator'' at state prisons in Muncy and, later, Cambridge Springs where she served the bulk of her sentence, about two hours north of her home in Pittsburgh's North Hills suburbs.

"Unequivocally, no, I didn't commit those forgeries," Orie said. Prosecutors never proved who created the documents, but Orie became criminally responsible when she vouched for their authenticity during her trial testimony.

"Whoever did those forgeries either did it because they thought they were helping me, or the more scarier thought is they did it to really hurt me."

The conviction on the non-forgery charges stemmed from Orie using her state-funded legislative staff to perform campaign work for her.

She continued to explain away that portion of her conviction, saying a "Senate rule allowed them to do campaign work on comp time in the office on their own cellphones, on their phones, that was the main crux of what I was convicted of."

But Allegheny County prosecutors produced evidence that Orie required the work in her office, on state time, and had workers claim to use comp time only after she learned of the investigation.

Nobody answered the phone at Orie's home Tuesday, and Costopoulos - who wants the state Supreme Court to review a Superior Court decision upholding Orie's conviction - didn't immediately return a call.

District attorney's spokesman Mike Manko criticized the interview.

"To publish this defendant's misstatements of the evidence in this case at this time is offensive to the jury process," Manko said.